The US fashion retailer Target is a great example of thinking outside the box, and in this cawse outside the gallery or catwalk. Last autumn in staged the "first "model-less" fashion show in the vast expanse of New York City's Grand Central Terminal, with holograms sporting the latest fall and winter apparel lines strutting down virtual runways. By posting the show on YouTube and Facebook, the company ensured that viewership extended beyond the station's million or so harried commuters."

The YouTube and Facebook references are less interesting than the use of holograms, a reminder that virtual existence doesn't have to be contained within the frame of a computer screen.

Virtual Tech Museum

Had an agreeable visit earlier this week to the Tech Virtual Museum. This is an A1 initiative. Run by the Tech Museum of Innovation in Silicon valley, the Tech Virtual Museum encourages people to design their own museum exhibits.

"Want to create your own museum exhibit? Want to develop it with other creative thinkers and experts around the world? Want to share your exhibits with visitors in virtual and real galleries? This is the place to design and prototype exhibits online, using the web and Second Life. Start here to propose exhibit projects, share wild ideas and prototype exhibits."

The museum has two full time staffers on hand to help and a budget of around $700,000 to realise virtual exhibits in real life.

Global Art and The Museum

This too might be of interest, a little something I came across on the ZKM site.

"....the first initiative to document a new museum geography which mirrors the globalization of the visual arts. What used to be called contemporary art, reappears in an expanded production as “Global Art”. Art museums, as against art fairs, biennials, and exhibitions, operate in a local frame, whether national or urban. Thus, they face very different audiences with an equally different notion of art and modernity. The website, with its link Global Window will serve as a platform and provide news of the changing museum scene."

ZKM, Virtual and Immersive

I'm suspicious of the idea of immersive experiences in virtual spaces. Yes, I know. Don the hat and the gloves and it's a different world. But when you move around virtual worlds you are somewhere different already and to constrain that in any way seems to me potentially harmful.

So it is I wander through the occasional 360 degree art work thinking, well that didn't last long. Have I benefited from the idea of immersion?

Over at ZKM Island this morning in SL I wandered through a piece called You Universe. It is essentially a construction of television test cards that you can enter. The act of entering deconstructs the panels of the object so that you are not fully immersed but have in front of you evidence of where you broke in.

It's well worth watching too when another avatar enters and the shape reconstructs itself. In truth this is an interactive rather than immersive experience. You can find it via the ZKM Website and this is the page you need to go to.

There are some great ideas here - not untypical of the german art ambience. I have to give a talk next week on immersive art and now at least I have a starting point.

Museum Blogs

Just noticed a number of virtual museum blogs cropping up. Nina Simone's Museum 2.0 looks the best established so far and I came across this earlier today: virtualmuseums.

Here's an interesting one as well, a page only but a short list of virtual museum links.

The design museum blog has this: "Virtual Design Museums must not only be virtual presentations of products, but could also be a good platform for historic software and their surfaces. I knew some good sites showing historic web design. The Vintage Mac Museum is a good sample for a combination of showing historic soft- and hardware as well." That's on the Vintage Mac Museum and this from the Design Museum London.

"The Design Museum London is at this time the only design museum with both, an important physical and a virtual department." This on Thessalonika is also worth a look as is this page.

Art Salon's take on the subject is here. A little outdated technically. But via Art Salon here is Organism Museum. It needs a plug-in which might be a result of not trusting in the online virtual worlds out there or in pure browser alternatives.

I'll return to this post a few times - in my spare time I might try to form a small directory here on this post.